In medieval times, Alchemists hoped to convert base metals
into the noble metal gold through the use of a Philosopher's Stone.

Today, in the field of information science, we talk about
Information Alchemy, converting data into information and then into
knowledge.Some people even add a 4th
stage of converting knowledge into wisdom[i], but
that will be for another blog post.Data is defined as the raw characters or numbers, whereas information is
defined as the processing of that data into various relationships so they have
some meaning.Dr. Eisenberg at the University of Washington describes knowledge as the
“collected, combined, organized, processed information for a purpose.”Over time, it is thought that accumulated and
refined knowledge leads to Wisdom.

This year, the total of all digital data created is forecast
to reach close to 4 Zettabyes, or 4x 1021, according to IDC[ii].This is nearly four times the 2010 volume and
it is growing rapidly.All of this data
should let us make a smarter and better planet.However, today we’re drowning in all this data because we don’t have the
time as individuals to process all this information, and we don’t have computer
systems that can turn this data into insight,

But soon that will change.We are entering a new era in computing which IBM is calling Cognitive
Computing.The first of these systems is
the IBM Watson system which debuted on the Jeopardy! Show 2 years ago.Traditional computing systems have done a
great job with handling data, including storing it and manipulating it into
information. So now we have lots of
financial, inventory, customer, and all sorts of other, mostly numerical,
information.

We also have lots of unstructured information such as text,
audio, graphics, and video.We used to say that 80% of the new bytes being
created today were associated with unstructured data, but that number is
probably closer to 90% given all the video being created these days.This text and multimedia information is
human-readable – in fact, it is designed by humans for humans to understand but
is not easily understandable by today’s computers.

And that is a considerable problem.Today, the transformation of information into
knowledge is primarily done in people’s heads.Not just by scientists, engineers, or financial analysts, but by
everyone who reads an article or watches a video.The time available for people (some would
say skilled people) to analyze information to gain insights (knowledge) is the
limiting factor in the production of new knowledge today. To say this another way, we are now
information-rich, but knowledge-poor.

The goal of the cognitive computing efforts is to remove
this limitation by designing computer systems that can take this abundance of
information, much of it in human readable/viewable formats, and convert into
knowledge.For example, in the Jeopardy!
IBM Challenge, the Watson computer system analyzed its deep information stores
to find the answer that best answered the clue and the category.It did this feat by utilizing many different
algorithms to attempt to “understand” the text information and a machine
learning (artificial intelligence) scoring system to select the best response.

In a more significant effort, IBM is working with Memorial
Sloan-Kettering and WellPoint (a major BC/BS licensee) to use cognitive
computing technology to assist doctors by helping to identify individualized
treatment options for patients with cancer. It is, in effect, creating knowledge of the
appropriate treatment options from information about the patient’s condition
and medical history, and information from clinical trials and best practices on
cancer treatment.

While the field of cognitive computing is just beginning, I believe
over the next several years, we will learn how to perform “Information Alchemy”
and we’ll see how this newly created knowledge can benefit our organizations
and our lives.

As the quintessential information-based organization, government agencies may be in the biggest need for "information Alchemy." Do you seen this need? Do you see opportunities for Cognitive Computing at your agency?